Back From The Dead
by joelmillers
Summary: Tess shows up at Tommy's compound three years after Joel watched her die. 2 parts, might add more in the future.
1. Chapter 1

The hollow movement of the front gates wakes him from his light snooze, sending him scrambling for his rifle. Clutching the gun as he tries aiming down in the dark with his tired eyes, he calls out to the figure at the door. "Get lost, or state your goddamn business," he yells down, fumbling for his flashlight with his sleepy hands. The chances of someone or something actually showing up at Tommy's compound were so low that he often dozed off on his watch shift, despite the danger that potentially brought with it. The figure doesn't answer, but it doesn't move either.

"Tell me you're lost in the dark," he calls down again, running his finger over the trigger. "I really don't feel like killin' ya and wakin' everyone up at this hour."

"I'm just looking for Tommy Miller," a woman's voice cut through the dark, quiet but strong enough to reach him. His brow furrowed, he adjusted his aim. "I was hopin' someone could point me in the right direction, if you know where he is."

"What are you looking for him for?"

The woman is quiet for a long time. He loads the gun to send the message that he's waiting, though she's gotten his attention. "I'm… lookin' for his brother, actually."

His stomach sinks. With a hard swallow, he impulsively moves to the stairs and takes them two at a time, finally getting his flashlight to flicker to life. He unlocks the gate with his rife out ahead of him, pointing it at the head of the traveler. "You found him. You've got two seconds to tell me what your business here, or I'll—" The sight he finds in the light of his flashlight takes the words, and the breath, right from his mouth.

Tess.

"Joel," she whispers, looking at him in the nearly nonexistent light coming from the small flashlight on his pack. It comes as such a shock that he takes a step back, grabbing his gun with twice the strength that he'd been using before. "Easy, easy, it's me…"

"Who's me?" he manages, trembling. It's like seeing a ghost. _Just another dream, keep it together, _he thinks, trying to hold back his rushing thoughts. When she doesn't answer, he says it again. "Who's—"

"Tess," she says, so quiet that he feels it in his bones before his head.

"Tess has been dead for three years—" he shouts as she steps forward, shoving the gun in her face. "You start explanin' or I swear, I'll kill ya."

"Joel, it's me, it's Tess, look," she says, standing still as to not startle him. "Look."

"How?" he yells, taking a step forward, the barrel of the rifle right between her eyes. "HOW?" He feels himself slipping into a panic, his mind starting to spin. "You were fuckin' dead, I SAW you! I watched you die…"

"I didn't, Joel, I—"

"You were infected, you showed it to me," he says, his voice cracking. "I saw it—"

She pulls the collar of her shirt to reveal a whitish red bite mark, much like that on Ellie's arm. "I'm immune. I didn't turn and my wounds weren't fatal."

He adjusted the gun again, his volume rising to full on screaming. "I SAW you on the ground, I SAW you!"

"Joel, I'm—"

"What in all hell is goin' on out here?" Tommy arrives behind his brother, his gun drawn and ready to fire. "What in the world..." He lowers his gun at the sight of Tess. "You told me she was dead."

_So I'm not losin' my goddamned mind… _he thought to himself, adjusting the gun but letting go of his poised position on the trigger.

"Easy, Texas… Easy," she whispers, wrapping her hand around the barrel of the rifle and lowering it away from her face.

That's enough for him. He lowers the gun, staring at her. "Holy shit," he exhales. "God, I… holy shit." He drops his weapon and takes her swiftly into his arms, where she nearly collapses into his chest. "_Tessa." _

He pulls her back through the gate and closes it quickly, stumbling against the wall to hold her even tighter. He showers her face with kisses, touches every inch of her like she'll disappear in moments. She's clinging to his body for dear life. She feels so much smaller than he remembers in his dreams, and she's filthy and cold and her hair is tangled and dirty and she's almost crying into his shirt. "Tess," he whispers into her hair, "Tess, Tess, Tessa…" and he can't stop saying it. It's all rushing back into his head at once. The three years he spent grieving her, all erased and replaced with one moment of her showing up at the gate. "Tommy," he manages to look up at his brother, who seems to be nearly as surprised as he is. "If you could go fix a shower and some hot food, if we can spare it…"

"Sure thing." He's off running before Joel can think twice.

As he turns his attention back to the woman he'd loved and grieved and loved again, he finds her finally crying into his chest, her fists balled with two handfuls of his shirt. "Tess," he murmurs, because he doesn't know what else he can say. He rubs her back, he tries to understand that the piece of him that had been missing for so long had finally been returned to him once again. He sinks to the ground, unsure of what else to do because his legs can't bear the weight of them both; they've forgotten how to after three years apart. She follows him down, curling into his lap as they fuse together on the grass. His ears ringing, he takes a handful of her hair and kisses her with all the energy he'd been saving up in every dream, feeling every inch of her under his hands, breathing and warm and pulsing and alive. So alive. Alive. He kisses her again, and again, and again, and she kisses him back.

"Tell me I'm not dreaming. Please," he manages between kisses, his heart hammering uncontrollably in his chest in response.

"Not today, big guy," she says meekly.

. . .

Tommy returns to retrieve them, watching as Joel picks her up off the ground and helps her to follow him into the nearest building where he's gathered some food and turned on the hot water for her. "C'mon, Tessa," he murmurs, his lips on her forehead, his arm wrapped so tightly around her waist that he feels he might break her in two. His heart trembles at the prospect of this all being a dream, that if he squeezes tight enough she'll turn to dust between his fingers and he'll wake up in another cold sweat on the basement floor in Colorado. He helps her through the door, noting the weakened steps she takes and the shaking of her small frame, worn down by god-knows-how-long by herself out in god-knows-where. "Tessa…"

"Joel," she whispers, gripping his forearm. Her eyes search his for some sort of confirmation that this is really happening, but she comes up empty. It's all surreal.

"I'm gonna leave you two alone… if you need anything, I'll be back up on watch." Tommy takes his leave, giving Joel a look that held too many words for him to say aloud. He closes the door behind him quietly, giving them some privacy.

"Let's get you cleaned up, c'mon now." He speaks softly, as if he's afraid to startle her. He leads her to the small bathroom and starts to unbutton her shirt without a thought of intimacy, only concern for her body and for her health. His heart sinks as she starts to cry again. He'd seen her cry a handful of times, and this was one of them. "Tess… honey, look at me."

She raises her eyes to him, holding back the sounds building behind her lips. "I… I can't believe I found you, three years I've been looking and now…" He unbuttons the rest of her shirt and pulls it away from her arms, finally noticing the shaking of his waiting hands. "I'm here."

"I'm here," he echoes, running a hand over her arm so gently he hardly feels her skin. She falls into him again, pressing her nose into his chest. "I just… I thought you were gone, I mourned you, Tess, I—"

Her quiet whimpers cut him off as he continues to undress her. He turns the water on, keeping one hand on her waist to keep her steady. "You're okay, baby," he breathes, touching bare abdomen, covered in scars he doesn't remember. "We're okay. Are you okay to get cleaned up alone?" She nods, trying to swallow the knot in her throat but coming up silent. "Alright. I'm gonna fix you some food, get you some water, alright? Take as long as you need." They don't have the water to spare, but he'll spare it for her anyway.

He leaves her alone to shower, moving back out to the dim kitchen to heat up the canned food Tommy brought for her. As he stirs her meal over the flame, he can hardly keep himself together. Time passes in a way he hasn't felt in so long, so slow and so fast at the same time. His mind pulls in a thousand different directions, his heart swells, his eyes feel full to bursting with tears but he doesn't let himself cry. He hears her cries echoing softly in the bathroom. Once her food is heated, he brings it to the table and goes to retrieve her from the shower, hearing her vocalizing growing louder. She turns the water off as he enters, pulling a towel around her shoulders before he sees her.

"Look at me," he breathes, pulling her trembling body in. "You're safe now. Whatever happened out there, you're safe now. I'm here. I'm here. It's me."

Her voice shakes. "This doesn't feel real."

He almost laughs. "You're tellin' me."

"I thought you were dead."

This time, he really laughs. "_You're tellin' me." _

He holds her close for a long time, wrapped up in her towel and shaking like a leaf in his grip, rocking her back and forth on his heels. He listens to the sound of her breathing. Her _breathing. _Goosebumps cover his skin at the idea of that being reality again. He doesn't understand, not yet. This is all surreal to him. But the prospect of time holds so much promise that he feels his heart might burst. Swallowing down tears, he reaches for the pile of clothes that Tommy took from Maria's closet in his dash for aid and handed them to her. "Let's get you dressed and get some food in ya. When's the last time you ate?" She shook her head, wiping away her tears. He frowned. "Well, c'mon, then."

He helps her into the shirt, feeling the overwhelming sensation of her living skin underneath his hands. It's not sexual or lustful, but it's intimate on a level he's never experienced. He dresses her in silence, brushing his thumbs over her hipbones, her shoulder blades, the nape of her neck, taking in the sheer miracle of her body. He worships every inch of her like it's his only chance of salvation. His ears ring, his hands shake, his stomach churns nervously, like if he blinks once more she'll disappear. Her voice brings him back to reality as she pulls her pants over her legs. "Romantic dinner for two, right Texas?" she smiles meekly through her tears. Still Tess. Always Tess.

"Well, I am the romantic type."


	2. Chapter 2

They stumbled into his (their) bedroom in the fading darkness, removing their own clothes instead of each other's. She stripped down to her bra and panties, and he to his briefs. Sweating from the summer heat, damp from the night's watch, and absolutely exhausted, they collapsed into a heap on the mattress before them. She curled herself into the shape of his body, fitting like a slightly-off puzzle piece that had been worn down and mangled, but still completed the bigger picture. He wrapped an arm around her and began to graze his fingers just over her skin. It was almost absentminded; he sent tingles across her back and down her spine, pulling her tighter to his body.

Her eyes fluttered closed, feeling closer to him than she had in recent days. He hadn't dared to touch her in any way she didn't give him to okay to. He'd undressed her that first night when she needed help getting into the shower, but that was the extent of it. She wanted him, of that she had no doubt. But it had been so long, and they were still trying to figure out who they were together, what they'd become, where they stood. So much had changed, and she didn't know a fraction of what the last three years had done to him. And she was so afraid to confide in him the journey that brought her back to him once again.

"Tessa Jane," he murmured softly, rubbing circles on her back. "I missed you, y'know."

"I know," she whispered back, her fingers curling on his chest. She peeked open one eye to see the sunlight just barely starting to filter through the shitty old curtains, casting a pinkish orange glow over the room. "I missed you too."

They lay there in the silence for a long time, listening to the other breathing, trying not to get too caught up on the thought of what they'd been through without their partner. Their opposite. Their missing piece. She took in the smell of him, grass and sweat and cheap soap. Not too different from what she remembered in the most sacred places in her mind. She'd been so afraid that she'd never find him again after Boston that she'd began to replay her memories of him every moment she found herself alone or forgetting, and every night before she went to sleep. Over time, she forgot the gravely quality of his voice, the rumble in his chest, the steady beating of his heart. The color of his eyes faded in her mind, the scratch of his beard, the peppering of grey hairs on his head. Soft, worn-out flannels and tan skin and rough hands… the pieces of him that she treasured the most started falling away, and soon she was only left with an idea of who he was.

And then she reached the gates of the plant, his flashlight shining in her eyes, his voice wildly accusing until it softened at the sight of her. Tess, his Tess, the woman he'd so loved and thought was lost to him forever, stood before him. And he'd closed the space between them and crushed her to his chest and all of a sudden, she remembered. Everything. Every moment. Every little nuance of his body, every little piece of him that had slowly broken away from her memory, it all came back at once. It was overwhelming, at the very least. Joyous, relieving, perfect, but overwhelming.

The sun rose slowly that morning, giving them something to blame for their lack of sleepiness as opposed to just admitting that it was the other's presence keeping them awake. Her heart ached at the prospect of falling asleep and waking up to find that the entire thing had been a dream. She clung to him with all of her strength, which he noted with the gentleness of his touch. He stopped his absentminded looping patterns on her spine to pause at the clasp of her bra every once in a while. His fingers played with the small amount of fabric pulled taut to keep her bare chest covered. He wanted her. She knew that he wanted her. But she wasn't ready, and he knew this. So they waited.

"Tessa," he murmured once more, after what felt like eternities of lying there in the sticky sunlight. The sheen of sweat that covered them also bound them together, closer than even their skin could bring them. "Tessa…" His words were fading to half-sleeping whispers of what he had been saving up inside him for so long. She knew damn well that the only time he said her name like that was in his sleep since he'd thought she'd died; Ellie told her so. That was how he grieved: by reliving their long nights together in his dreams, only to have her ripped away by the infected or by the military. Either way, she'd heard the way he screamed in his sleep for his daughter and woke up thrashing and grabbing for anything he could hang onto. Ellie had told Tess of his hallucinations that winter he spent wounded, and the way that he still woke up screaming sometimes. She shared that she thought this could make things better, her coming back. That he could realize his guilt was lifted, just as it was lifted off of her as well.

Ellie didn't quite understand what it was like to have a lover come walking back from the dead.

Nor could she be expected to. Nobody could be _expected _to, really. And she didn't expect Joel to, either. She was surprised he hadn't killed her on-sight, or at least demanded more information from her. But then again, maybe he was just desperate to believe she was still alive.

She felt his hand brush over her shoulder and reach down her front until it lay over her heart. He rested it there for a long time, feeling the soft thumping of her pulse under her skin. She spread her fingers and placed her palm in the same spot on his chest, feeling the sturdy beating there and quietly thanking whatever higher power that had gotten her to him that there was still a heartbeat to feel. That he hadn't been stolen from her the way he'd believed she'd been stolen from him all that time ago at the State House. The quiet ritual went without a single word. They needed no pretense or prompting to understand that they were overflowing with the idea of the other being alive.

She placed a soft kiss just above the source of the pulsing, as if it would seal a secret covenant of love and protection for the rest of her days. She planned to never leave his side again. Three years on her own, especially the eighteen months she spent trekking out to Tommy's without any aid, had made her realize just how badly she needed him. Just how hard it was to go it alone in a world where she couldn't afford to be solitary like that. Partners can get you killed, sure, but traveling solo is a death sentence. Curling close to him once again, she reminded herself that she didn't have to be alone. She'd made it. He was here.

She felt him playing with the clasp of her bra again in the lazy morning light. "I love you." Just a statement, simple and clean and uncomplicated. He said nothing else. It was the first time he had said it since she had arrived. The weight of the world started to lift from her shoulders. "I love you so much. Please stay."

"I'm not going anywhere," she tried to promise. Her words got stuck in her throat and lumped there into a mass that blocked her vocalization; it came out as a whisper on his skin. "I'm here."

It was almost like she had to keep reminding him of that. _I'm here, I'm here. _Always needing some kind of tangible reminder that this wasn't all some sick dream or hallucination. This was real, she was alive, and everything felt right. Or as right as it could, for the time being. He took the hand that had been playing with the clasp on her back and buried it tenderly in her hair, tipping her head up so he could kiss her.

His lips felt right against hers. There was no other way to describe it. It was as if the universe had done all of creation a great disservice in depriving them of each other for so long. His mouth crashed into hers with such care and such abandon at the same time. Like crashing and pulling gently into port all in one. Like a raging fire and a calming rhythmic ocean coming easily with the fusing of two mouths. It was perfect. Everything was perfect. She wanted to crawl into the very essence of him, her safe place, and sleep there for the rest of eternity.

"I love you too," she breathed, her bottom lip just barely grazing his as the words rushed out of her. "So much."

It almost felt like a foreign concept to her. Love. She hadn't used the word once since Boston, and even then it had been such a rarity that she'd forgotten its meaning. Sure, the thought about the word when the piece of him that she was trying so hard to remember crossed her mind. She thought of how much she loved him, and how that would get her to him somehow, but she'd allowed herself to think on the reality that he could have been dead. In fact, in her lonely travels, she had almost convinced herself that she would never find him. But it was either try to find him, or die on her own. And the very faint sliver of hope that he might be out there propelled her forward in even the most dire of situations. She loved him. As unlike her as it was, it was all she had left to go on.

They spent the early hours there in bed together, exhausted but not yet sleeping. She felt the last three years pushing up against her throat, choking her from the inside and disabling her from saying the words she so needed to say to him. Her arrival at Tommy's plant was bought at a price: brushes with death, brushes with infected, and brushes with men with intentions far beyond her imagination. There were innumerable encounters that she'd fought through to reach him. And now, she was safe. That was the hardest part to believe.

She found herself cowering closer to his chest, eyes shut tight against the memories that were starting to creep into her peaceful moment with him. His grip tightened around her in response. His voice came, close to her ear. "You're safe here, y'know." She nodded in the crook of his neck, but she suddenly didn't feel so safe. She'd made it to him, but at what cost? "Whatever happened out there, it's over now." But it didn't feel like it was over. Reluctant tears began to barely touch the corners of her eyes. "And you can say whatever you need to say."

She pursed her lips and put a careful kiss on his jaw. "I don't know what to say," she breathed, her voice cracking. "I'm sorry."

"You've got nothin' to be sorry for," he hissed, pulling her closer. "You hear me? Nothin'."

Her heart began to hammer in her chest, remembering the way the hunters had eyed her up when they had her locked up in that basement. The way she'd crawled out of a window after setting the place to flames. The way she spent that night, and so many nights after, holed up in an abandoned house, tending to her wounds and listening on edge for any sign of another living being coming anywhere close to her. She'd only been held captive for a few weeks, but her recovery afterwards was a slow process. Joel was the only thought that kept her going. Nothing else would be enough to keep her alive. She hadn't realized when they were together in Boston that he was a large part of the reason she found the will to keep surviving. Without him, what was she fighting for? Her life, sure, but the idea of living alone, sleeping alone, in such a broken world made her heart ache in her chest. She was so glad that he had Ellie after he thought she'd died. Ellie gave him something to fight for, a light at the end of all the darkness that touched him.

For her, the sheer thought of him thinking she was dead crushed her. Back in Boston, he had expressed small glimpses of the pain he'd experienced after losing his daughter so many years earlier. She didn't know much; Joel was very private about his emotions, many times to a fault. He'd told her just once that he'd never be able to carry the weight of losing her too. He had always said that if she went, he would go too. In a way, perhaps Ellie had kept him alive.

Her thoughts fluttered between the imagined scenarios of his time spent without her and the reality of what she had gone through without him. She fought the infected she'd encountered with considerably less terror than she had before she discovered she was immune. Still, anything with the will to take her life scared her. What terrified her more than anything was the hunters. No matter where her thoughts went, they always came back to them. With their hungry eyes and uncontrollable rages, with their twisted morals and ways of survival not even she could understand. Some spoke of eating her. Others, of raping her. The only way to convince them to keep her alive and well was to tell them she was immune. That if they brought her west, to the Fireflies, they could reap a reward much more valuable than food or momentary pleasure. _Make my death worth something, at least, _she'd pleaded with one of the more reasonable of them. It worked, for a time. She was able to resist enough to discourage any violation, at least until one of the hunters, the one with the lust for the reward from the militia group, would come to check out the screaming and struggling, and command the monsters away from her for a time.

It was a miracle she'd made it out relatively unscathed. Still, she saw their faces in her dreams, their eyes dripping with lustful rage, bloodthirsty and burning in the house where they'd held her. Tears had begun to drip down her cheeks and fell onto his bare skin.

"Whatever happened then, it's over now," he whispered, not needing to hear her thoughts to know. "And it's never gonna happen again."

"I know," she said. But she didn't really feel it.

"You can tell me anything."

"I know."

He swallowed. "It was real hard without you, Tessa." She felt the rumble of his chest as he began to speak with some volume again. "Thinkin' you were gone, it killed me. That winter… I thought I saw you. And the idea of you bein' alive was somethin' I tried so hard not to cling to. But part of me always thought… I guess it was 'cause I never put ya in the ground. Never had that piece to close off the wound."

She was quiet for a long time, still crying. She felt him shift slightly as he rolled back to reach for something in the drawer of his bedside table. He returned to her and reached for her hand, pressing something cold into her palm. Opening her fingers as she looked down, she took in the sight of a gold chain, with a small dragonfly strung along in the middle. Her anklet. All this time she'd thought it was lost. Tears welled in her eyes once more, with twice the strength they'd had just moments before. "Joel," she breathed, staring at the piece of jewelry. "You kept this?"

"I… I tried to let it go. I did, over and over again. But you're my lucky charm. What can I say?" He laughed a little bit, the sound rumbling in his chest. "Figured you might want it back."

"Joel," she said again, coming up empty with any other coherent sentence. She was beside herself from such a small gesture. She burrowed into his neck once more, clutching the anklet in her fingers. He returned to the rhythmic rubbing of her back, humming a small tune she recognized from all those years ago. She couldn't place the song or the name, but suddenly it felt as if they were in their bed in Boston, exhausted from a long day of scavenging and the assault on each other's mouths that ensure from the moment they shut the door of the apartment behind them. Things would never be the same, no, but they could be different. And that was good enough for her.

"Get some rest, baby," he murmured in her hair. She obliged, eyes fluttering shut before he finished the sentence. "It's okay now."

She let the horrors of her travels recede back into the shadows of her mind, saving their telling for another day. Instead, she allowed the sound of his breathing and his steady heartbeat to be her lullaby, basking in the truth that he was alive and well and holding her. For the moment, that was more than enough.


End file.
